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Safe physical interaction is critical for deploying robotic manipulators in human-robot interaction and contact-rich tasks, where uncertainty, external forces, and actuator limitations can compromise both performance and safety. We propose…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-05-29 Faisal Lawan , Xiaoran Han , Joaquin Carrasco , Barry Lennox , Xiaoxiao Cheng

With the increasing complexity of real-world systems and varying environmental uncertainties, it is difficult to build an accurate dynamic model, which poses challenges especially for safety-critical control. In this paper, a learning-based…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-08-13 Sihua Zhang , Di-Hua Zhai , Xiaobing Dai , Tzu-yuan Huang , Yuanqing Xia , Sandra Hirche

Passivity is necessary for robots to fluidly collaborate and interact with humans physically. Nevertheless, due to the unconstrained nature of passivity-based impedance control laws, the robot is vulnerable to infeasible and unsafe…

Robotics · Computer Science 2024-03-18 Zhiquan Zhang , Tianyu Li , Nadia Figueroa

Continuum robots are well suited for navigating confined and fragile environments, such as vascular or endoluminal anatomy, where contact with surrounding structures is often unavoidable. While controlled contact can assist motion,…

Autonomy advances have enabled robots in diverse environments and close human interaction, necessitating controllers with formal safety guarantees. This paper introduces an experimental platform designed for the validation and demonstration…

Robotics · Computer Science 2023-10-18 Bhavya Giri Goswami , Manan Tayal , Karthik Rajgopal , Pushpak Jagtap , Shishir Kolathaya

A robot making contact with an environment or human presents potential safety risks, including excessive collision force. While experiments on the effect of robot inertia, relative velocity, and interface stiffness on collision are in…

Robotics · Computer Science 2020-04-27 Kevin Haninger , Dragoljub Surdilovic

This paper studies the problem of finite-time convergence to a prescribed safe set for nonlinear systems whose initial states violate the safety constraints. Existing Control Lyapunov-Barrier Functions (CLBFs) can enforce recovery to the…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2026-03-27 Anni Li , Yingqing Chen , Christos G. Cassandras , Wei Xiao

Model information can be used to predict future trajectories, so it has huge potential to avoid dangerous region when implementing reinforcement learning (RL) on real-world tasks, like autonomous driving. However, existing studies mostly…

Robotics · Computer Science 2021-03-08 Haitong Ma , Jianyu Chen , Shengbo Eben Li , Ziyu Lin , Yang Guan , Yangang Ren , Sifa Zheng

Control barrier functions (CBFs) have become a popular tool to enforce safety of a control system. CBFs are commonly utilized in a quadratic program formulation (CBF-QP) as safety-critical constraints. A class $\mathcal{K}$ function in CBFs…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2022-04-12 Hengbo Ma , Bike Zhang , Masayoshi Tomizuka , Koushil Sreenath

This paper proposes a safety-critical controller for dynamic and uncertain environments, leveraging a robust environment control barrier function (ECBF) to enhance the robustness against the measurement and prediction uncertainties…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-03-21 Ying Shuai Quan , Jian Zhou , Erik Frisk , Chung Choo Chung

Collision avoidance is a widely investigated topic in robotic applications. When applying collision avoidance techniques to a mobile robot, how to deal with the spatial structure of the robot still remains a challenge. In this paper, we…

Robotics · Computer Science 2022-05-10 Fan Ding , Han Wang , Jianping He , Yi Ren , Yu Zheng

We introduce a novel method for mobile robot navigation in dynamic, unknown environments, leveraging onboard sensing and distributionally robust optimization to impose probabilistic safety constraints. Our method introduces a…

Robotics · Computer Science 2025-05-07 Kehan Long , Yinzhuang Yi , Zhirui Dai , Sylvia Herbert , Jorge Cortés , Nikolay Atanasov

This paper introduces a decentralized estimator-based safety-critical controller designed for formation control of non-holonomic mobile robots operating in communication-constrained environments. The proposed framework integrates a robust…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-05-13 Vishrut Bohara , Siavash Farzan

In co-manipulative continuum robots (CCRs), multiple continuum arms cooperate by grasping a common flexible object, forming a closed-chain deformable mechanical system. The closed-chain coupling induces strong dynamic interactions and…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-04-07 Rana Danesh , Farrokh Janabi-Sharifi , Farhad Aghili

Physical human-robot interaction offers the potential to leverage human intelligence and robot physical capabilities to enable a range of exciting applications, e.g., collaborative robots for rehabilitation. Safety is critical for the…

Robotics · Computer Science 2026-04-28 Rui Luo , Jonas Mariager Jakobsen , Wesley Roozing , Federico Califano , Cheng Fang

Singularities, manifesting as special configuration states, deteriorate robot performance and may even lead to a loss of control over the system. This paper addresses the kinematic singularity concerns in robotic systems with model mismatch…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-11-13 Mingkun Wu , Alisa Rupenyan , Burkhard Corves

This paper proposes a unified control framework based on Response-Aware Risk-Constrained Control Barrier Function for dynamic safety boundary control of vehicles. Addressing the problem of physical model parameter mismatch, the framework…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2026-03-27 Qijun Liao , Jue Yang

We present a closed-form optimal control that satisfies both safety constraints (i.e., state constraints) and input constraints (e.g., actuator limits) using a composition of multiple control barrier functions (CBFs). This main contribution…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2024-07-08 Pedram Rabiee , Jesse B. Hoagg

Within the concept of physical human-robot interaction (pHRI), the most important criterion is the safety of the human operator interacting with a high degree of freedom (DoF) robot. Therefore, a robust control scheme is in high demand to…

Robotics · Computer Science 2023-12-06 Mahdi Hejrati , Jouni Mattila

Robot manipulation in a physically-constrained environment requires compliant manipulation. Compliant manipulation is a manipulation skill to adjust hand motion based on the force imposed by the environment. Recently, reinforcement learning…